Author's Notes: I'm not really sure where this came from. It's something of a hodge-podge of comic, show, and movie canons, but is ultimately an original retelling (if there can be such a thing) of the first meeting, courtship, and engagement of Gomez and Morticia Addams. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it up until the end...

Oh, yes, and the title is compliments of Milton.

The sound of clashing steel emanated from the gymnasium of Our Lady of Endor Satanic Academy in Westfield, New Jersey. On any other night, the din might have proclaimed some life-or-death conflict, or else a very raucous conviviality; as it was Tuesday, it meant fencing practice.

"New girl?" Gomez queried, rolling his wrist to easily parry Balthazar's attacking thrust.

"Ophelia's cousin," Gomez's own cousin replied, scuttling down the strip as Gomez advanced upon him. "She didn't tell you?"

Behind his mask, Gomez frowned. "It must have slipped her mind."

"I can't imagine how. Even from the back, the girl looked worth mentioning. Legs long enough to wrap around you twice."

"Addamses!" bellowed their coach. "Save the hen party for the locker room! Balthazar, you're slouching again! Clean lines, people, clean lines!"

Balthazar straightened, with barely enough time to parry Gomez's lunge. Their coach barked an approval and moved on to the next pair of fighters. "Riposte, Alford, riposte!"

"What year is she in?" Gomez asked over the sound of multiple shower sprays as he soaped up in one of the locker room shower stalls after practice.

"Who?" Balthazar called from the next stall over.

"Ophelia's cousin!"

"I don't know! Ask your girlfriend!"

"Why should I," Gomez asked, plucking at the front of his red and gray school scarf so that it sat just so above the breast of his black wool coat, "when the two of you have apparently been such bosom buddies of late?"

Balthazar's smirk looked entirely too mischievous on his boyish face as he laced up his wingtips. "Do I detect a note of jealousy in the perfume of your words, dear cousin?"

"Hardly. Merely a lack of surprise."

"If you're that jaded to her transgressions, why do you keep forgiving her?"

Gomez's jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He had not yet told Balthazar that the price his parents had named for his role in the ugly business with Fester and the Amore twins had been that of his own romantic fate. If women had come between brothers, then there would be no more women, plural; for Gomez, there was to be only one, and she was to be of his parents' choosing.

She was Ophelia Frump.

Truth be told, the very idea of marrying Ophelia more than galled him - it terrified him. She was flighty, fickle. Insane, yes, but even her madness was misplaced. More than delusional, she was deluded, her psychosis sloppy and slapdash; in short, himself, squared. He was no brooding Hamlet, and he feared that she might make him so out of sheer compensation almost as much as he feared that she wouldn't. They were two of a kind, twin lunatics with no stabilizing Earth to keep either from transcending their equally tenuous orbits. In time, Gomez knew, they would either collide to their mutual anihilation, or scatter into distant, different stars. It would be a marriage made in heaven, all right - one with each of them occupying separate galaxies. They wouldn't even get to share the joy of making each other miserable.

C'est la vie, he thought with a sigh, and pushed his gloved hands into his coat pockets as he and Balthazar left the locker room and crossed the courtyard that stood between the gymnasium and the boys' dormitories. New snow creaked beneath their shoes as they walked. Gomez lit a kretek and offered one to Balthazar, who habitually refused.

"Has Aunt Eudora said whether or not your family will be hosting their annual Hexmas party this year?" Balthazar asked.

Gomez cocked an incredulous eyebrow. "My mother, let a little estrangement and figurative fratricide keep her from societal triumph? Surely you jest."

Balthazar smiled. "Touché. I'm glad to hear she's getting along all right."

The words "without Fester" hung unspoken in the air. Gomez vanquished them with a plume of clove-scented smoke, guilt twisting his stomach.

"She's a strong woman," he said. "It would take a mob to bring her down. Which she would probably enjoy," he admitted with a shrug. "She's always happiest in a crowd."

"Ah, the proud Repelli matrilineal tradition of histrionic personality disorder."

"Mm. It's a pity Fester and I never had a sister. I know Mother still laments my being a boy."

Balthazar shrugged. "She did her best."

"Yes, but training only goes so far. I simply haven't the talent."

"Pish-tosh. You're a marvellous ham."

"You really think so?"

"On your better days, you make Don Quixote look positively practical."

Gomez smiled and inclined his head in humility. "You're too kind."

"Yes. My father thinks so, too," Balthazar sighed. " 'You're nearly eighteen, Balthazar, and you haven't even been tried for assault, let alone manslaughter!' "

"Patience," Gomez consoled him. "Good things come to those who wait. And then you eat them."

"That's easy for you to say. You ripped your nanny's throat out at six."

Gomez shrugged. "She said I looked like a little vampire; I was only playing along."

"Even so. Do you know what I would have done? Filled a box with earth and gone to sleep in it."

Gomez frowned as they reached the dormitory. "What's so strange about that?"

They passed the common room, exchanged brief greetings with the boys inside, were invited by their other cousin Itt to play cards, and agreed to join the next game after they dropped off their gear in their room.

"Well, nothing, on the whole," Balthazar went on as they ascended the stairs. "What I mean to say is, that would have been the first thing I thought to do. I wouldn't have gone for her jugular because it simply wouldn't have occurred to me. I'm not benevolent, thank Lucifer, but sometimes I wonder if being benign isn't almost worse."

"Nonsense. A tumor needn't be malignant to leech the life out of a person. Your wickedness isn't substandard; it's subtle. A spider which does not bite may still lay its eggs in someone's ear."

Balthazar looked unconvinced. "If that's the case, they're certainly taking their time hatching."

Gomez laughed and clapped his cousin encouragingly on the shoulder, but his grin was quick to wilt with Balthazar's next question: "Speaking of spiders, will you be interrogating your white widow tonight about her suspiciously inconstant tongue?"

"If I ask her anything in regard to her tongue, it certainly won't be that she use it to speak."

"So crude, cousin."

Gomez's eyebrows ascended his forehead. "Mister Legs-long-enough-to-wrap-around-you-twice thinks me crude?"

"Well, they were. Are. Or, with a bit of luck, will be."

"Bravado. You're too sweet to sweet-talk anyone."

Balthazar shrugged. "Maybe I won't have to. Maybe I'll mean it."

"The trick, old man, is to always mean it."

Balthazar scoffed and rolled his eyes. "You can't tell me you've genuinely loved every woman you've wooed."

"Loved? No. Desired, longed for, treasured, yes. If only for an hour at a time. Tell them everything except eternity, and you'll never be caught in a lie."

"And what will you say on your wedding day, if not 'till death do us part?' "

Gomez forced a hearty laugh up past his lead-lined heart. " 'Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.' "

Margaret Womack looked up from her Romantics homework when suddenly there came a rapping, as of someone gently tapping, tapping at her chamber door.

She glanced warily between it and the volume of Poe on her desk.

"Come in?"

In lieu of a raven, Sister Lilith Aleister Crowley entered the dormitory, followed by an unfamiliar girl. She was about Margaret's age, but therein did their similarities end. Margaret was of average height, with shoulder-length red hair and pointed features that placed her in an ambiguous part of the spectrum between plain and pretty; this girl was tall, with a long, thick black braid that tapered, whiplike, at its end, and the sort of aristocratic beauty usually reserved for the limestone busts of Great Royal Wives found in Pharoanic tombs.

Margaret disliked her immediately.

"Morticia," said Sister Crowley, addressing the new arrival, "this is Margaret Womack. Margaret, this is your new roommate, Morticia Frump."

Startled, Margaret noticed for the first time that one of the girl's pale, long-fingered hands was wrapped around the iron handle of a piece of luggage that looked like an old steamer trunk modified to be wheeled around like a modern suitcase - and her name alarmed Margaret just as much as her apparent intent to stay.

"Frump? As in, Ophelia Frump?"

"My cousin." The new girl's voice was low but clear, and a small, almost apologetic smile curved her too-red lips.

Oh, no...

"Margaret will show you to your classes and acquaint you with the layout of the school and our general customs. You'll have to see Sister Lovecraft in the library for your textbooks. Lights out is sun-up, no boys in the girls' dorms and vice-versa. The faculty will not play spectator to your transgressions, but neither will we intervene on your behalf should anything legally untoward befall your person. At Our Lady of Endor, we take care of our own, but above all, everyone is expected to take care of themselves. Is that clear?"

"Crystal, Sister. Thank you."

Sister Crowley smiled. "Have a good night, girls." She bowed out of the room and closed the door with a quiet creak behind her.

There was a moment of awkward silence before Margaret turned back to her homework and feigned complete and uninterruptable absorption in The Fall of the House of Usher.

Morticia stood a moment longer, and then, taking the hint, hinged the handle of her trunk and folded her impossibly long, black stocking-clad legs beneath her to sit on the floor and begin unpacking the beast.

"I'm nothing like her, you know."

Margaret's head twisted around. She frowned. "Excuse me?"

"My cousin, Ophelia. I saw the look on your face when you said her name. I've sometimes had that look, too."

Margaret worried her lips together, skeptically studying the olive branch she had been extended.

"Ophelia's..." she started, then closed her mouth, unsure.

"Polarizing?" Morticia diplomatically supplied.

A two-faced, manipulative tramp, Margaret wanted to say, but instead said, "Yes."

Morticia smiled. It faded quickly, like a gesture she had only learned through repetition and practice, not necessarily insincere but only displayed by a conscious effort.

She said nothing, and Margaret felt that the ball had been subtly rolled to rest in her corner.

"So...where are you from?" she asked, somewhat lamely.

"Oh," Morticia shrugged demurely, "here and there, between Lisbon and Minsk. My family traveled a lot."

"Military?"

"Carnival. My mother was a snakecharmer and a fortuneteller, and my father was a geek. Papa died just this past August."

"Oh," said Margaret. "I'm sorry."

"Thank you."

"How did he die, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Choked on a bat's head. His favorite," Morticia sighed wistfully.

Margaret suppressed a grimace. "How awful!"

She meant the bat-eating itself, but Morticia didn't need to know that.

"Mm. Mama is heartbroken. She retired immediately, and we moved back to Papa's family home in Swamp Town. Aunt Hester - Ophelia's mother - suggested I be sent to school here with Ophelia, to take my mind off of things and give my mother time to grieve without having to worry about a teenage daughter getting underfoot."

"But isn't that a little...insensitive?" Margaret said before she could stop herself. "I mean, don't you need time, too?"

Morticia shrugged and smiled again. She reminded Margaret of a silent film star, all black-and-white beauty, fluttering eyelashes and accented motions designed to convey what abbreviated intertitles could not.

"Oh, I'm all right. I miss him, but he went well, doing what he loved, and every time I hear the flap of wings or the screech of a bat in the night, I know he's looking up at me, keeping both eyes on me - one good, and one glass."

Margaret wisely decided against commenting on the creepiness of one's father unavoidably looking up one's skirt from the afterlife, and opted for a nod and what she hoped was a sympathetic expression.

Suddenly, Morticia shook her head. Her braid swung like a noose in a breeze.

"Oh, but listen to me, telling you my entire life story! What about you, Margaret? Are you from New York originally?"

Margaret was. The daughter of a self-made man and his social-climber wife, she'd been raised Episcopalian, but had been sent to the academy regardless, as bragging rights to her parents' little princess attending school with the heirs and heiresses to billion-dollar fortunes trumped their religious affiliation (which was really more of a social convention anyway, but that fact was never to be mentioned in polite conversation, which included tea with one's grandmother, no matter how badly one wished to cause her cardiac arrest, do calm down, Mother Womack, Margaret's only joking, more shortbread, anyone?).

She'd gotten used to Mass being on Friday nights fairly quickly, less used to it being Black (although she was by now old hat at turning a blind eye to Sister Lilith Caligula's theatrical nudity), and had come to feel only mildly uncomfortable in the school's largely self-governing and Darwinian atmosphere. She enjoyed her subjects, although she wasn't particularly good at any of them, and had carved a quiet niche for herself as That Girl Who Wears Pink, for which she was both feared and respected.

Morticia nodded, eyes wide, rapt, and Margaret found herself warming to the new girl's presence. Morticia hadn't been lying, either - calm, wry, polite: she really was nothing like her blonde floozy of a cousin. No doubt she would be popular as well, with her good looks and restrained charm. If Margaret could only keep Morticia on her side, she could prove to be a powerful ally.

Just because her family's money was new didn't mean they hadn't bred Margaret well.

Six-hundred sixty-four, six-hundred sixty-five, six-hundred sixty-six...

Morticia counted yaks, unable to sleep. Outside her window, the steady droning of bullfrogs and crickets was giving way to the irritating chirps of morning birds. In the bed on the opposite side of the room, Margaret was snoring softly, and had been since midnight. Morticia had heard of earlybirds before, but Margaret bordered on ridiculous. Still, she seemed a sweet enough girl, even if she did have questionable taste in fashion accessories. And decor. And food - Morticia had had to mask her disgust at Magaret's bedtime snack, which had looked like a small brick of woodchips wrapped in brightly colored foil. A granola bar, the packaging had read. Perhaps it was an American thing.

But Margaret had been generous enough to give Morticia the benefit of the doubt regarding her relation to Ophelia; the least Morticia could do in return was forgive the other girl a few harmless quirks.

Ophelia.

Morticia turned onto her side and opened her eyes to stare through the darkness at the wall. She hadn't seen her cousin in three years, not since Ophelia and Aunt Hester had summered in France and caravanned with the carnival between Versailles and Gargilesse-Dampierre. All Morticia could remember of the girl four months her senior was a spoiled, selfish fifteen-year-old whose favorite pastime was forcing Morticia to play lookout while she dallied in the costume truck with whichever roustabout had caught her fancy that night, and if Margaret's reaction to Ophelia's name had told Morticia anything, it was that Ophelia had changed little since.

Secretly, Morticia had been relieved when she'd learned that it was Margaret, and not Ophelia, with whom she would be sharing a room for the next few months. She was no longer so easily led, but the rest of the school year would be much less stressful without having to continually convince her cousin that such was true.

If it was true, Morticia thought ruefully. Ophelia wasn't even in the room, and already she had managed to irritate Morticia to the point where sleep itself had now become a pipe dream.

Sighing, Morticia sat up in bed, donned her slippers and dressing gown, and padded over to the window. She peeled back one of the heavy velvet curtains, squinting in the creamy dawn light, sat on the sill and cranked the window open a few inches. The morning air was humid and cool, and carried the scent of dead leaves and...some kind of cigar?

The spicy smell disappeared just as quickly as she had caught it, and Morticia chalked it up to her mind playing tricks on her. She missed the incense of her mother's fortunetelling tent, that was all. Missed the pulpy must of the soft bark shavings that had lined the snakes' cages of chickenwire and worn-smooth wood.

Her hand dipped automatically into the right pocket of her dressing gown and reappeared with a half-smoked box of Nat Sherman Black & Golds. She extracted one long, slim cigarette and lit it with the heavy lighter that had been her father's. The heirloom's lizard-patterned leather always felt warm to the touch, and Morticia traced the pad of her thumb fondly over its cracks and bumps, remembering the first time she had been permitted to light one of Papa's Gauloises Brunes, seated at six on his bony lap.

She closed her eyes, letting the pang of nostalgia wash over her in a quick but heavy wave. Papa was dead. America was her home now. She would attend school, avoid Ophelia, and, if she watched often enough for bats, might even come out of the experience with an intact will to live.